Organic market in Old San Juan
A Saturday morning tradition is born
Maura Curley
It started with one woman’s desire to eat better. Now it is growing into a healthier way of life for people in Old San Juan and beyond.
Laura Daen has mobilized a group of volunteers and farmers to create an organic market in the Old City, where residents have been dependent upon supermarket produce and preservative ridden products for too long.
Every Saturday beginning at 8 a.m. farmers from throughout the island and vendors selling natural products transform the courtyard of the historic Museo de San Juan on Calle Norzagaray into kaleidoscope of color, scents, sights and sounds.
Tables brimming with salad greens and herbs, beans, fruits and roots, fresh baked bread, and exotic flowers are offered up for sale amidst the aroma of fresh brewed organic Puerto Rican coffee and the buzz of blenders mixing fresh fruit smoothies.
The market, known in Puerto Rico as Mercado Agricola Natural Viejo San Juan, has quickly become a local weekend tradition. It opened in the spring of 2010, and has been growing each week, as word spreads about this organic enterprise.
Daen says the market is the result of her quest to find organic produce in Puerto Rico.
“ I knew it must exist, but I didn’t know where” she explains.
She eventually discovered Adrian, a farmer who runs a large farm in Guanica, on Puerto Rico's southern coast. She says he was willing to drive two hours to deliver produce to her and her friends in Old San Juan.
Orders kept pouring in, and she ran out of space in her living room. This made her realize there were others beyond her circle of friends who wanted fresh, local and organic. She and a core group of Puerto Rico's pioneers: Roberta Wratten, Cindy Golbert, Paola Nesmith, Jerry Carlo, Idalia Borges, and Arnaldo Mignucci, whom Daen mentions by name to give credit where it is due, sprang into action.
The response form Puerto Rico farmers and consumers interested in a healthier lifestyle has convinced Daen and her volunteers that the market is a concept whose time has come. Daen says the location at the Museo de Puerto Rico is especially fitting, since the site was originally a local market in the 19th century, long before the museum was established in 1978.
Daen runs the market on a small budget. A sum was raised to create banners and tablecloths and vendors are being charged $10 a table to cover costs.
” We want to make this sustainable" says Daen, emphasizing she wants to keep the market in Old San Juan “forever.”
She says the market "offers organic foods to consumers, an outlet for farmers to sell their produce, and educates people about agriculture."
Daen believes the more people who buy locally grown produce, the more farmers will be able to afford to grow it.
Her advise to anyone on another island who would like to establish an organic farmer's market?
“Just begin!”
Photo of woman shoping at organic market in Old San Juna, courtesy Mercado Agricola Natural Viejo San Juan. ' '
Maura Curley, a former restaurant critic, writes frequently about food.
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